ViaBTC Sparks Bitcoin Scaling Debate in Reddit AMA

The head of a bitcoin mining pool that has emerged as a strong advocate for a bigger block size argued in a Reddit QA today that many in China’s mining community support such a move.

ViaBTC founder Haipo Yang took questions during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on the r/btc subreddit, commenting on the block size debate.

The event saw strong advocacy for Bitcoin Unlimited, a bitcoin software implementation that has been proposed as an alternative to Bitcoin Core, the primary user client for the bitcoin network. ViaBTC was launched in June of this year (and quickly emerged as controversial).

The AMA session came amid the ongoing rollout of Segregated Witness, a change to bitcoin’s code aimed at increasing the amount of transactions the network can handle without adjusting the block size. Yet the upgrade has proven to be a controversial one among some bitcoin users, who have argued that an increase in the block size – or a variable size with Unlimited – is the better approach.

Yang claimed in the session that, as it stands, China’s mining community wants a bigger block size, but isn’t unified in its support for Unlimited specifically.